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International Finance

Major Overview

Our mission is to prepare you to fully understand today’s economic and financial environment, while enabling you to evaluate and finance alternative investment opportunities and manage stellar portfolios. Your studies will be focused on the application of economics within financial and non-financial institutions and markets, particularly the optimal allocation of scarce financial assets, including money, loans, bonds, stocks, and currencies. You will also learn how to deal with potential challenges within finance like time, information, uncertainty, diversification, and hedging and asset management, all while concentrating on empirical predictions.

Learning Environment

Our comprehensive program will help you master a variety of issues within the international economic environments of the past and present. Our seminars are designed to encourage hands-on activities as well as in-class participation, while introducing you to crucial business and management concepts, the role of market supply and demand, diverse topics within international financial markets, and the legal environment within which today’s businesses must operate.

Core Curriculum

The International Finance core courses, which you must take as part of the major requirements, will provide you with the tools you’ll need to ground your present and future studies. Your introduction to the fundamentals of International Finance will help pave the way for your successful completion of other International Finance courses.

BA1020 Introduction To The Business Experience

Teams of student-managers compete in an integrated, international business simulation designed to introduce them to business concepts. Students will manage a company operating in the international action-capture camera and drones markets. Using a hands-on experiential approach, teams make management, marketing, human resources, operations, finance and corporate social responsibility decisions that allow them to meet their firm’s objectives over ten fiscal years. Students are graded on company performance, and on individual and group analysis of the situation at hand.

Introduces the tools of statistical analysis. Combines theory with extensive data collection and computer-assisted laboratory work. Develops an attitude of mind accepting uncertainty and variability as part of problem analysis and decision-making. Topics include: exploratory data analysis and data transformation, hypothesis-testing and the analysis of variance, simple and multiple regression with residual and influence analyses.

Introduces differential and integral calculus. Develops the concepts of calculus as applied to polynomials, logarithmic, and exponential functions. Topics include: limits, derivatives, techniques of differentiation, applications to extrema and graphing; the definite integral; the fundamental theorem of calculus, applications; logarithmic and exponential functions, growth and decay; partial derivatives. Appropriate for students in the biological, management, computer and social sciences.

This course explores the ethical issues that arise from the operation of business in a globalized and inter-connected economy. By applying the tools of theory, ethical analysis and personal reflection to a variety of real-life case studies, students will explore several disciplines of management practice, including marketing, operations, strategy, organizational behaviour, finance and accounting. Topical areas will be explored from multiple perspectives, including human rights, political involvement by business, sweatshop
labour, the export of hazardous products, deceptive marketing practices, bribery, whistleblowing, religious/social discrimination, corporate governance, cross-cultural differences, sustainability and environmental issues, corporate social responsibility, and consumer society. The format of the course will be a series of interactive seminars and student participation is required. By the end of the course, students should have developed an organised, personally reflective approach to decision-making that can offer guidance when confronting difficult ethical dilemmas in both business and personal life.

Focuses on the role played by relative market prices in our society and on the forces of market supply and demand in determining these prices. Since the actions of consumers and firms underlie supply and demand, the course studies in detail the behavior of these two groups.

Examines the determinants of the levels of national income, employment, rates of interest, and prices. Studies in detail the instruments of monetary and fiscal policy, highlighting the domestic and international repercussions of their implementation.

Studies the economic functions and structures of financial asset markets, financial intermediaries, and money. It also presents the role of the central bank in macroeconomic performance of open economies.

This course introduces students to the financial accounting cycle and financial reporting for corporations. Students learn how to measure and record accounting data and prepare financial statements. At the end of the course, students choose a company and do an analysis of their financial statements, comparing their company against a competitor company, using financial ratios.

The course introduces students to basic Management/Organizational Behavior concepts and enables them to understand the attitude and behaviors on the individual level and the group level within organizations. Students will be enabled to use Organizational Behavior tools and theories to recognize organizational patterns within a complex social situation. Students will be provided with readings, lectures, and cases that provide a diverse and robust understanding of human interaction in organization.

This introductory marketing course develops students’ understanding of the principles of marketing and their use in international business. Students learn how to collect and analyze data sets to make marketing decisions with the goal of understanding customers wants, demands, and needs; they learn marketing from a strategic and functional point of view. With a focus on problem solving, students work in multicultural teams cultivating a greater sensitivity to cultural issues while improving communication skills. Students will consider marketing in the French, US, and international marketplace.

Examines finance as the practical application of economic theory and accounting data in the procurement and employment of capital funds. Applies the principles of strong fiscal planning and control to asset investment, and debt and equity financing decisions. Emphasizes sound leveraging in view of the time value of money, subject to the pernicious effects of taxation and inflation. BA 2002 recommended for simultaneous registration.

Following an introduction to the International Monetary System and Foreign Exchange Markets, students explore spot and spot-forward arbitrage. They also engage in a FX trading competition using a Demo platform. Students will complete a project on exchange rate forecasting, and discover the essentials of financial derivatives (options, futures and swaps), including practical applications. At the end of the course special topics such as ETFs are investigated. Each semester a different financial literary work is explored and used as the focal point for group discussion.

Students will examine the legal process and the legal environment within which business must operate, as well as the interrelationship of government and business. Students develop an understanding of the methods by which legal decisions are formulated as they affect both individual rights and business transactions.

Briefly examines the great legal families in the world: Common Law, Civil Law, Socialist Law, and Islamic Law. Within the Civil Law family, emphasizes French Contract Law and then explores the law of the European Union. Studies the legal aspects of international business transactions and uses major international and European projects to examine the principles discussed.

Introduces the processes and analytical tools necessary for investment decision-making. Provides the basic skills, modes of analysis and institutional background useful to work in the investment area of finance firms or as an individual investor. Students who successfully complete the course are expected to be able to work in the field or to continue their specialization in Security Analysis or Portfolio Management.

This course is an introduction to applied computational methods for finance and the valuation of financial firms and elements of capital structure: equity, bonds, and options and additional methods for optimization of securities portfolios and hedging risk. We emphasize implementation and use selected models. Aimed at providing the necessary technical and analytical skills useful for graduate school work, working in financial firms or investment banks.

Teams of student-managers compete in a complex international business simulation designed to allow them to demonstrate mastery of department-level, major and discipline specific learning objectives. The teams operate a company in the international athletic footwear industry. Using a hands-on experiential approach, teams make strategic management, marketing, human resources, operations, facilities, finance, and corporate social responsibility decisions over ten fiscal years. Students are evaluated on their
company’s performance, but also on written individual and group analyses of the simulation and on a final comprehensive exam.